A Woman Who Desires More Writes a #Memoir

Hear me share a couple of childhood anecdotes from The Girl with the Black and Blue along with discussions of immigration and what values drive a woman to persevere on the road to pursuing her dreams.

Recently I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Fiona Citkin for her program, #TheBridgeforWomenWorldwide. (18-minute video)

“I have always loved wild places.

I grew up on a three-generation, hundred-acre family farm

where my siblings and I were put out to pasture at an early age.

We crawled on our bellies in our stick forts

and grazed on wild strawberries till the cows came home.”

Linda Summersea

Linda Summersea, a late bloomer in creative writing, authored a memoir THE GIRL WITH THE BLACK AND BLUE DOLL, and confessed:

“My writing is not my hobby. It’s my passion. I want to write and travel and live my life to the fullest for as long as I am able.”

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This Is Where It Began

This is The Farm. One-hundred acres of wild woods and domesticated fields. A couple dozen milk cows, two draft horses, two pigs, twelve+ rabbits, twelve-odd laying hens, twenty-four ducks, one billy goat, one barn cat named Jasper, and one mongrel dog named Skippy. And four barefoot kids.

“I have always loved wild places. I grew up on a hundred-acre farm where my siblings and I were put out to pasture at an early age. We crawled on our bellies in our stick forts, and grazed on wild strawberries till the cows came home.”

It’s all here—from the Bee Hives and the Vegetable Garden to the Big Barn, Silo, and Horse Barn, the Orchard, Pig Pen, Garage, Farm House, Tractor Barn, Tool Shed (my favorite), Corn Crib, Outhouse, Duck Coop, Chicken Coop, Pond, Woodpile, Uncle Joe’s Workshop, Hay Fields, Cow Pastures, Horse’s Hill, original owners’ Family Cemetery, The Dump, The Swamp, Woodlot, and The Back Forty.

“Later we scanned the skies above and chanted “Star light, star bright…” Fireflies blinked in response— but mosquitos showed us who’s boss.”

Well, here we are…

…having crossed into the second month of 2021.

What do you think? Are we better off? Do we see positivity on the horizon? Are we feeling better? Healthier? Mentally more stable? Are you at work on any resolutions?

I’m just glad that I’m not toggling between CNN Live and MSNBC 24/7. Although I did appreciate and enjoy the content between 9 PM and midnight—that I had little previous exposure to.

I got my first COVID-19 vaccine innoculation this week. Whew.

I’ve been listening to more music. Mostly 60s and 70s material. Thinking about those times, and missing live music. Very much. No sense looking for 2021 Bands On Tour.

However, I’ve been taste-testing podcasts. Some that I had forgotten about.

Flowers are blooming here in the rain. Time to think about the garden. I decided to dig a 12″ deep trench, 2′ wide, 8′ long. Maybe tomorrow. I want to drop my compost bins into the ditch so the worms can get in through the slots.

Dieting. Semi-successfully. I’ve taken off my “Covid Nine” but am having a difficult time getting past it. Weighing my food and abstaining from alcohol. Boo.

Can’t resist flipping through details of wild places to visit in 2022.

Oh yeah… Definitely writing more and taking Restorative Yoga classes.

Hiking in the woods, alone with my thoughts. Lost. Not Lost. Beating back depression with a trekking pole.

Baby steps. Thumbs up! 🙂

Swimming in the Dead Sea in Summer

Yesterday was my 70th birthday. Rather a big one, I think, and worthy of a big celebration. I don’t mean a big party or big money spent. I prefer to celebrate a significant transition with some kind of adventure, big or small or in-between.

I had hoped, if all went well, to be swimming in the Dead Sea this month as part of an expedition to Jordan to visit the ruins at Petra. It would be exhilarating to hike for a couple days in and around the ruins, then camp under the stars in the desert near Wadi Rum.

The same company that handled my return to Morocco to walk with Berber Nomads in 2017 and last summer’s 22-day Uncharted Expedition to Kazakhstan, Siberia, and Mongolia offers a “Women’s Expedition” to Jordan.

At first I ignored it because I thought in terms of the specialized women’s activities that one sees here and there. I surely didn’t want a frou-frou trip with shopping, make-up demos, and wine tasting. Definitely NOT my thing!

It turns out that their Woman’s Expedition involves hiking around Petra and Wadi Rum for a couple of days, camping under the stars (Love!) and, as they say in their materials “the best opportunity possible for developing a deeper understanding of Middle Eastern women – with full respect for their traditional cultural values.”

That’s what I want. Meeting Jordanian women in their homes for Middle Eastern cooking lessons, tea, the kohl experience, talking and socializing.

Of course, COVID put an end to all that. I’ve spent my days hiking familiar trails, gardening, harvesting vegetables, berry-picking, baking, installing 300+ feet of drip irrigation, bird watching, and—boring—repairing my dishwasher.

As the individual days of COVID blurred together, I decided to, at least, try one new-to-me adventure: stand-up paddleboarding.

This is what I emailed to my sons:

“It was great fun and a super workout. 100% positive experience. I loved it. I fell off three times. Lost my center of gravity, and the board shot forward out from under me. Then, Bang! Hit the water feet first and WHOOSH, rocket down Deep Deep Deep, followed by Glub Glub Glub, returning to the surface. LOL 
Getting back on the board isn’t too difficult, but I wouldn’t want to be 50 lb heavier.
Quartermaster Air temp was 61 F and water temp 65 F  (10 degrees warmer than Puget Sound). I wore my long-sleeve performance shirt under my sunblock shirt, with quick-dry river pants. Was perfectly comfortable even when wet. Actually quite refreshing.
Basic skills: Knees slightly bent.  Don’t grab the board with your toes or you’ll get cramps. Most important: Keep your core tight to control board wobble.
I knew I’d certainly be falling in. Brought a change of clothes.”

I perhaps should have been writing about my COVID experience these months. That’s what “everyone” says we should be doing—for the sake of documenting these days. But I haven’t.

I’m just trying to keep my head above water. I’ll continue to listen to the trees rustle in the breeze with the occasional scream of a gull in the distance.

Read more

Day 17. Self-quarantine and what have I learned?

Day 17. Self-quarantine and what have I learned?

  1. It’s not that different from my regular routine. Introvert here.
  2. I’m not accomplishing as much as I thought I would.
  3. Gained 3 carb pounds but lost them as soon as I realized I was foraging in the pantry too often.
  4. Walking the yard is more fun than the treadmill.
    1. I can listen to my first audio book. (Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez)
    2. I can do mental gardening, deciding which plants need pruning and such.
    3. I can even stop and pluck weeds—if I want to.

Biggest achievement: I wrote my first piece of Fiction.

That may sound surprising, but my formal background is in Art Education. Only in recent years have I begun to put my life’s desire into practice. I’m finally growing into the writer that I’ve always wanted to become.

I’m still a tender seedling. I identify as a fresh, green vine of snow peas. I’m pulling myself up by my fragile tendrils and reaching for the sky.

One of our island writers suggested that it might be fun if some of us wrote a piece together. She wrote a scene. Created a list of characters, both animate and inanimate. The first fifteen volunteers would have four days to submit 500 words and she would combine our work into The Flame Flickers and post for our fellow islanders.

I signed right up. Any writing challenge excites me.

(Confession: Self-quarantine makes me an easy target.)

I loved my assigned character, enjoyed the fantasizing involved, and sent it in. Am looking forward to seeing the other writers’ contributions.

Amazingly, I’m pretty sure that I could tackle a bigger piece of Fiction.

Writing Memoir is by design an “all about me” genre. I like the idea of using Fiction—as many writers do—as a way to write about things I’m uncomfortable sharing in Memoir.

For example: XX XXXXXXX XXX XXXXXXXXXX XXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX.

There. I said it.

Well, I tried, but I just couldn’t rip off the Band-aid.

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To Post or Not to Post

The fact that my blogging has diminished to a trickle hasn’t escaped my notice.

The reason that my blogging has diminished to a trickle is not so obvious.

I think most writers can understand my dilemma.

In the academic world, “publish or perish” is king. Or queen.

In the world of an independent writer seeking publication, it gets a little tricky.

The fact is that if one is participating in journal submissions or composing essays for writing contests, one rule supersedes them all.

“Contributions/entries may not have been previously published in any format including blogs.”

It’s an entirely fair rule. I get that. No one wants to publish second-hand goods.

I’ve decided that maybe I can continue blogging with content that falls into another category. Not significant enough to submit to a journal. Not prize-worthy.

Definitely not politics, and not ranting. Just interesting food for thought.

IMHO.

Watch this space.

A Comedy of Errors

Back story: I’ve been coming to Belize from time to time for 30 years. In 1989, there was no electric power cable under the sea from the mainland to this island. Electricity was supplied by a humongous generator in town that hummed like a sleeping giant. It shook itself awake periodically, knocking out the power, bringing darkness and an ominous quiet. Eventually the purr of the ceiling fan’s return to slow revolutions followed the hum returning to the background. We slept in a thatched hut at the water’s edge. No window glass. Louvered hardwood window slats.

An elusive boa constrictor resided in the bar at the center of the semi-circle of huts, and my young sons hoped to see him in the rafters as they took turns getting drinking water for the hut.

The streets (Front, Middle, Back Sts.) were still unpaved—silky, hard-packed sand. My 9-year-old son Chris wore a machete in a leather sheath as he climbed the Mayan ruins at Altun Ha. We danced energetic Soca on Friday nights on the patio of the Sun Breeze Hotel.

One Sunday morning, we walked by a man lying in the middle of the street. Flies buzzed around his closed eyes.

“Is that man dead, Daddy?” my 7-year-old asked.

“No, Zack, he’s just sleeping,” my husband said as we walked around the body.

Those were good times. The tiny resort was called Paradise and it was torn down when a concrete resort—The Phoenix—rose up in its place. True.

____________________________________________________________________

January 2019. Day 1. An island off the coast of Belize.

After a successful morning of writing, I took a brief walk around the resort to see what was new. Not many people around for high season.

I decided to walk south under the clouds for two miles on the beach and then inland to The Truck Stop, and a rare place that sells ice cream cones. Sea Salt Caramel. Set out north again, on the road this time, through brief showers that fell between the patches of tropical sun. Being Sunday, it turned out to be very busy with local families ripping by on golf carts overflowing with babies and children, mamas at the wheel. (There are few cars here.) I returned to the beach via the path to El Pescador after stopping at a groceria for orange juice, pita bread, a couple of Belikin Lites—and some frozen bacon to keep the beer cold on the return trip.

Remember Jeff Goldblum traveling with his dehydrated food to Ecuador in Vibes? That’s me, filling up my suitcase to 49 lb (50 lb allowed) with granola, coffee, canned clams, flour, Himalayan pink salt, spices, probiotics, vitamins and more. It’s always worth it. As a woman traveling alone, I prefer to cook in my unit most of the time with fresh seafood and bring what I can from home to supplement. It’s a continuation of the frugality that was so necessary in my childhood.

After unpacking my grocery bag and cracking open a beer, I had a successful session of writing and editing, and granted myself the guilty pleasure of reading a culinary mystery after dinner. Fell asleep around 8 or 9 PM. Re-awakened at 1 or 2 AM, wrote for an hour or two, then tried to get back to sleep with no luck.

I have a lot on my mind. Even meditation methods didn’t work. I kept tearing off my sleep mask to take notes on the thoughts that kept popping up. I know from experience that middle-of-the-night messages will be forgotten if I don’t write them down.

Took an antihistamine and when that also failed to send me to sleep, I decided to catch up with news online. Nevermind Trump. I’m leaving him to Nancy Pelosi. I just wanted to know if Green Book won at Golden Globes. It did! And Mershahala Ali won best Supporting Actor. Yay.

At 5 AM, I put out the “Do Not Disturb” sign and went back to sleep pretty much instantly.

At 9:30 AM, I was awakened from a deep sleep (…and a nightmare: Christopher Walken approaching my home, leading a Pitchfork Brigade, all carrying flaming torches.). There was a persistent banging on my door. I tried to ignore it. No luck. It was the housekeeper saying that my door sign had blown off during the night. Which way had I hung the sign? Did I want “Do Not Disturb” or “Please Make Up Room”?

“Do Not Disturb”, I said.

Winter is Coming

The fog is thick this morning, surrounding us in a soft blanket of grey, creeping close and closer still, cloaking the shrubs, disguising the gardens. The fog horn has blown all night long at intervals as regular as breath. In and out, in and out, in and out. I sync my breathing, pull up the quilt again, and soon return to my dreams.

I always look forward to the horn in the night, as it predicts the following day will begin with cozy quiet.

A hike in the fog is a mystery walk. Who knows what’s around the next bend? It alerts the senses to each snap of a twig, each rustle of wings leaving the brush, each croaky caw of the raven high in the top of a fir.

Winter is coming.

winter is comingFog on water. Clean. Fresh as laundry on the line.

Fog will soon become rain.  Batten down the hatches.

Except, no need to batten down hatches or shutter the windows. No wind is on the horizon.

I’m reading Ahab’s Wife—which must be the source of my windy thoughts. A nautical read—especially of an earlier century—always makes me think of cobblestone streets and scrimshaw from Nantucket town to Lahaina. Like Ahab’s wife, I would have made a fine New England whaler’s wife, I think, watching from the rooftop walk if I couldn’t be at sea. If I couldn’t climb the rigging in search of a whale’s spouting, I’d be stitching a cross-stitch sampler and minding the gardens before minding the hearth fires that follow. I would have plenty of time to write.

Winter is coming.

Winter is a writer’s blank canvas, as white as the snow, as empty as a new journal page.

Music shifts from blues to classical. And lots of musing.

Winter is coming.

I hear a flock of geese going by. Right this minute. There’s an osprey still occupying the nest down the road, but not for long.

Winter is coming.

I doubt that I could live where there is no change of seasons.

How else would I receive reminders to begin again?

How else to embrace the changes that are inevitable?

winter is coming

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Running

I haven’t followed the sport of running in recent years, but this morning’s profile of Eliud Kipchoge in The New York Times caught my eye and I was only too happy to have it interfere with my writing frustrations.

Eliud Kipchoge is the greatest marathoner ever. He broke a world record in Berlin this morning. 2:02.

The only running I ever did was running from my mother in my toddler days when I perfected the long distance sprint through our apartment. My sprint always culminated with a flop and slide on the cold linoleum floor of my bedroom and ended on the far wall beneath my bed, clinging to the galvanized springs.

Why reading about running?

Because: Massachusetts. Because: Boston. Because: Patriots Day. Because: Boston Marathon.

The Boston Marathon is always held on the Patriots Day holiday, and in Massachusetts Patriots Day is more about the marathon than Lexington and Concord.

It was also a school holiday. As a young teacher, I turned on the TV and listened to the marathon broadcast in the background as I hung out on my day off, half-listening to Heartbreak Hill but especially the final mile and the laurel wreaths. The rainy days, the hot days, the snow and sleet days. The we-run-no-matter-what-the-weather days.

Johnny Kelley, Bill Rodgers, Kathy Switzer. Dick and Rick Hoyt. Even Rosie Ruiz. The Tsarnaev‘s. We know the names. The successes and the failures. The inspiration and the shame.

Running is about challenging yourself and about endurance for the long haul. Same goes for being a writer. Some days you wonder why you’re still trying so hard. You think of all the books you could be reading, if you weren’t so engaged in the writing.

Eliud Kipchoge attributes his success to Patrick Sang, his mentor and coach, a relationship that began years ago.

Kipchoge:

“If I hadn’t met him, my life would be different.”

Sang explains it this way.

“When you’re young, you always hope that one day you’ll be somebody,” Sang said. “And in that journey, you need someone to hold you by the hand. It does not matter who that person is, so long as they believe that your dreams are valid. So for me, when you find a young person with a passion, don’t disappoint them. Give them a helping hand and see them grow.”

I think about persons past and present who represent the milestones in my life. Those who supported me, and those who didn’t. More important—I think about those I hoped to inspire.

As a teacher, I remember those faces, the ones who looked up to me with such enthusiasm as I passed out construction paper  and scissors from my art cart.

My students had many questions for me. They shared their fears and family secrets. So many questions asked so innocently.

Why me? What did I know? I hope it was because they knew I would always be truthful and worthy of their trust.

In retrospect, I have one regret. I wish I had hugged them. I wish I had given them big, squishy, “I believe in you” hugs. At that point in my life, I didn’t know the value of hugs. I had experienced only one significant hug in my life.

I was in the last stall in the darkest corner of the second floor girls’ lavatory when the heavy door to the hall swung open with a squeak. Quick, clattering footsteps crossed the tile floor. Searching footsteps, pausing, moving forward again. Sister Florentine’s voice rose above the chatter of the other eighth grade girls.
“Where’s Linda?” she asked.
What? Why? Questions formed between my worried eyes. I left the stall cautiously, its door swinging shut behind me, and dragged my feet down the dark aisle into the light streaming through the translucent glass blocks above the porcelain sinks.
Sister Florentine ran to me and enclosed me in her arms. The fire had been reported on the radio. Her wooden cross pressed against my chest and the woolen sleeves of her habit enclosed me in their folds.
I stiffened, unsure of how to respond.
Sister’s arms were wrapped tightly around me, squeezing and rocking as I stood stiffly in place.
It was my first hug.

When I feel down, I would love to have a dream in which I could see all of my students lined up in a row, the hundreds who have sat in my classrooms and made me feel special. I would remember the connection that we shared, and I would begin again.

on my way

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Make Beautiful Music

Last night I dreamed that I was getting married. My female relatives, young and old, were gathered all around me. It was a consummate summer scene in a fragrant apple orchard with vivid green grass and brilliant blue sky.

Instead of a frothy veil, I wore a simple crown of daisies in my hair. This crown was just like the one I had braided in my kitchen from a bouquet of Stop & Shop daisies shortly before I was married nearly forty-three years ago. This time there was no groom to be seen.

I innately knew that this marriage was mine alone.

I watched my sister approach carrying a banjo, in spite of the fact that she has never played a musical instrument.

She handed the banjo to me, in spite of the fact that I also have never played a musical instrument.

I sat down with this instrument in the midst of the wedding guests and looked down at the fretboard that crossed my lap. It was a light-colored wood that made me think of birch forests. Or maybe aspen.make beautiful music

I tentatively strummed across its taut nylon strings with my thumb, and was surprised to hear amazing music, so I continued to play. I played as if I knew what I were doing and the music kept coming, clear and beautiful.

The relatives moved in closer, surprised at my sudden talent.

And then it was gone.

I think that my dream means that sometimes we underestimate our abilities and our capacity for creating our own joy.

The banjo is a less respected instrument than guitars and violins and cellos, but it’s capable of beautiful music. Just because we’re different doesn’t mean that we can’t be beautiful.

This year, embrace your uniqueness and your dreams of the future. Don’t depend on anyone else to get you there or you may find yourself disappointed.

You and your path, like the banjo, might be uncommon, but they’re no Linda Summersealess deserving of success. You can get there on your own. I know you can.

Happy New Year.

make beautiful music

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